>> rose: welcome to the program, we begin this evening with david brooks, "the new york times" columnist, on the apparent difference on foreign policy between president obama and former secretary of state hillary clinton. >> i think she established her goal. set out her goal and this is who she is, this was sincere t wasn't fake. what interests me is how it will play in the democratting primaries. everyone assumes that she's just going to walk over to the nomination am i really suspect that is not true. i do not believe the democratic primary voters where she is on foreign policy, i do not think they are truman john f. kennedy style foreign policy party. and if you look at the pew research poll on the values of different types of democrats, they're just not where she is any more. they're not clinton-style democrats. the party has moved left. >> rose: we continue this evening with john lithgow, first he talks about his role as king lear.

at shakespeare in the park. >> i always had this feeling that shakespeare himself had a kind of bucket list. of the great human emotions. and that he was going to write a play in which one of those emotions was the engine driving that entire play. you have sensual jealousee in othello. you have old age and dementia in king lear. you have the oedipus complex in hamlet. you have blood thirsty ambition in macbeth. and those are just the tragedies. you know, you have all varieties of romantic love in the comedies. he just, he covers everything. i mean you can't talk about a human relationship or passion without a shakespearian reference point. >> rose: david brooks and john lithgow when we continue.

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from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: turning now to politic, president obama and hillary clinton, the former secretary of state were supposed to patch things up on wednesday night at a martha vineyard's dinner party, just days of a mrs. clinton seemingly slammed the president's foreign policy in an interview with the magazine. david brooks wrote about it in his column for the no times. i'm pleased to have him here. david, explain to my how you feel about this. i know on reading the column that you tend to agree that secretary clinton is more right than president obama on certain points that she has made. but give me the political dementia-- demeant-- dimension of this and what she deliberately said in the atlantic and understood the ramifications of it was it that mack cilia. >> i think not.

there is a machiavellian spin in that she is someone careful in what she says and it is natural she will want to distance herself from president obama in some regards. he has a 36% approval rating continuationing would foolish not to. it is interesting to watch how traditionally vice presidents distanced themselves from presidents, how george h.w. bush distanced himself from reagan. how al gore poorly distanced himself from clinton z too much and it might have cost him the election. so if you are in the administration, running after an administration of your own party, you have to do that dance. and so there is that theory that she decided to step out and widen the gap between the two, create some daylight. i tend to think she just started talking. >> rose: that's what i think too and you know jeffrey goldberg who is a close friend of mine is somewhat hawkish on some of these issues. i think she was reflecting off of him a little am and he has a way of getting people to relax. but let's face it, this wasn't just political. it was a policy dince. they come from different wings of the democratic party. if you watched hillly

clinton in the senate she was hanging with john mccain and lindsey graham. that doesn't mean shes with a rep cac but a truman democrat. >> rose: more than that, david, people that were there with her, david petraeus and bob gates all have said how much admiration they had for her and an appreciation, i mean qu use hawk in if you want to or some of the words you use like muscular. >> i would say she has a mentality that as long as history is ongoing, as long as history isn't over there are going to be hostile ideologies to mark and to our values. and they are probably going to need fighting. and so i think she goes in with that sort of muscular idea that history is filled with conflict. and she also had the direct experience when her husband was president of seeing cos vow, seeing the crackup of yugoslavia, a case where american power really did an amazing amount of good. so she not only sees the problems, she sees greater possibility for american power to do good around the world than her old boss. >> rose: but it was a little late too. i mean it was good that they

did it, but they could have done it earlier, many argue. >> very true. but you know, then when you talk to president obama, you know, he is someone who really feels that america's messed up when we have been over aggressive. when we have overreached. and he's supervence difficult to that, supercautious, superhesitant to use american force. will sometimes do t but he has to be dragged kicking and screaming into it and i really have been struck at sort of dinner party conversation around washington around new york, around the country, when the clinton people, some of the people in the clinton state department with her and some of the people in the orbit talk about president obama, they do so in critical to sometimes quite critical terms as someone who is too hesitant to use power. >> rose: let me suggest this to you. i do a lot of this, as you know, and talk to a lot of these people on air, not at dinner parties in new york and washington. and they seem to have-- . >> i bet dow some dinner parties too, charlie. >> rose: i don't get out much. (laughter)

>> working too hard. >> rose: there is this. i mean there are people who are now saying not just in terms of being more muscular, in terms of important decisions, syria was the one. they're also saying that syria in a sense, the decisions made there not, didn't had yes, the worries that president obama had. but little concern about what happened if you do do nothing. and by doing nothing, some very smart people are saying we saw the rise of isis which is now one of the biggest threats we face on the national security front. >> right. i think the galling thing for people in the state department, and other people, leone panetta over at cia, david petraeus is that internally within the obama administration they were warning this. they were saying back a year ago, year and a half ago if we do nothing in syria, first of all it will not stay in syria, it's going to spill over to iraq. and we'll be creating a vacuum in which these sorts of forces can grow.

and so they were lobbying quite specifically that we have to start arming the moderate opposition, we have to start creating that. and so they now feel their views were painfully vindicated by events, exactly what they predicted has come to pass and now it may be too late or now we have to do something much bigger. i think there is a sense of gallingness. and i think was true of a lot of the foreign policy agencies, all against the white house and the white house was very firm, no, no, we're not going to do this. >> and the president has done a series of interviews too, first of all, equally intriguing, one with the economist magazine and one with tom friedman in which he tried to outline his foreign policy and started with the west point speech thing. >> and he said on syria, he said that thing was a fantasy. and clearly the people in the state department did not think it was a fantasy. so it's just a difference of opinion about whether you could have done something in syria. >> rose: he still believes that, david. >> i'm sure he believes that. and we'll never know. and to her credit, hillary clinton, we've talked about this interview with jeff goldberg is so confrontational am but she's

very modest throughout it it's kind of winning interview. i really liked her, after reading it because she's saying of course we'll never knew, coy have been wrong, maybe he was right. she's very human in the way she conducted herself in that interview. >> rose: not only that she pays compliment to him. to watch him in the room, es he smart, he's looking for options. it's a very careful conversation that he leads. >> i suspect there's genuine affection between the two. she was a very loyal secretary of state. he clearly has no real incentive to be hostile to her. i don't think he feels hostility toward her. but they do come from different wings of the party. and that was evident in the senate, it's evident now. >> rose: so did it work for her? has she accomplished what might have been her goal or did she do it so clumsily that it backfired? >> i think she established her goal. set out her goal and this is who she is. this was sincere t wasn't fake. what interests me is how it will play in the democratic primary. everyone assumes that she's just going to walk over to the nomination am i really suspect that is not true.

i do not believe the democratic primary voters, where she is on foreign policy, i do not think there are truman, john f. kennedy style foreign policy party. and if you look at the pew research poll on the values of different types of democrats, they're just not where she is any more. they're not clinton-style democrats. the part has moved left, as the republican part has moved right, the democratic party has moved left. and there's just a huge yawning gap for somebody on the left, somebody pretending to be on the left to challenge her. and i suspect that person will, and if i had set up a parlor game, herods of winning the nomination i wouldn't put it higher than 65%. i are will think, people are overvaluing the ease of her nomination. >> rose: i agree with that on that too. the interesting question is that person elizabeth warren? >> yeah, i don't have any direct knowledge of that. but other people who are smart in these areas say she's

between john f. kennedy and barack obama. something like 40, 50, 60 u.s. senators ran for president and they were o for 60. they all lost. and the reason they lost was they think oh, it's because i will to take tough votes. the real reason was they weren't risk-takers.

they thought the step from where they were now to the presidency was a small step. and they could just take some small steps to get there. but it's a big stepnd you have to take a risk. and i think it's going to be up to secretary clinton to take some risk to show us something knew so she doesn't seem look the 1990s or even the past eight years, so she does seem like something new. and taking a risk when su have the whole army behind you, it takes a lot of guts to do that i think she has enormous guts so maybe she will do it but it takes not only guts but a quality we have come to appreciate more and more in politics and which i fiend more rare which is imagination. and it will take a lot of imagination to present herself as something if you so the country can say we're sick of where we are today, but here is an experienced person offering something new, which is sort of a magical combination. >> rose: thank you, david, go write a column. >> okay, thank you, charlie. david brooks from washington, back in a moment. >> june lithgow is here, an actor who has won emmies and golden globes for television

performance, tony awards on stage and twice an oscar nominated for his work in fill. he is now playing one of the most demanding and challenging parts ever written for the stage. obviously you know who i am talking about king lear. the show say public theatre free shakespeare in the park production it plays at the delacorte these never new york central park through august 17th. i am very pleased to have john lithgow on this program to talk about lear and much more. thank you for coming. >> great to be here, charlie. >> rose: how does the great john lithgow and 9 great play king lear come together in new york. >> well, the play is much greater than i am. i have been nagging oscar use 'tis for years and years to at least consider me for it. probably, the first i mentioned it to him was probably long before i should have played it. but now i think i've just entered that interesting window of opportunity for lear, when you're young enough to play it because you still have got the strength, but you're old

enough to play it because you can bring a little bit of authenticity, an old man losing his viability. >> rose: you did an amazing thing, which is you kept a diary of preparation. how did the preparation start? >> well, i-- . >> rose: did it start a long time ago. >> for me it started, well, sure, i've lived a long 68-year-old life. so i did age. that was my first preparation. but i began working hard on it in march. i stopped shaving, of course. this is a real beard, charlie. and i hired a ucla grad student to just t was me and coup me on words. it went in extremely fast. i knew better than i even realized. i have seen it so many times in my life. i played the role of gloucester in college. but i figured it's going to be such a demanding part, the rehearsal period is going to be so tough, the

last thing i wanted to do was go home and study words in the night. so i learned it completely cold by the first day of rehearsal. the first time i've ever done that. and sure enough, i mean t was a process of stamin stamina-building, rehearsing it. >> talk about learning itment because you said you had a ucla student come in. he would coup you so that you would know the lines. >> yeah. >> that lead to your lines. >> he would read you your lines too. >> he would just sit and listen, correct me as i-- actually in my days on "third rock from the sun" i worked out an extremely efficient way of mem orizing great gones of material. because it came at you very fast and it was a very, very wordy and fast-paced show. i trained my assistant to feed me my lines with a 3 minute pause between ef-- 3 second pause between every

single word. a, and and the. and i would drill the line in all those pauses and i could learn a speech like that once through. and that's how i went about it. >> the reason i'm interested is the idea of mem orizing things is a great fascination for me. >> and it gets harder as you get older. >> rose: an making speech souse don't have to refer to notes that whole thing. >> yes, right. but with lear, there's also a superb internal logic to the writing. somehow or other it's-- i've absorbed it over the years. all those brilliant and vivid speeches. >> rose: what is the challenge of playing it outside? >> it's less of a challenge than a marvelous opportunities. it's a big play, full of guy began particular passions and gigantic ideas. and i'm a very, strail actor. it's as big as the big

outdoors. and you know, doing it at the delacorte with this hungry audience, this audience of passionate new york theatre-goers who waited all day to get their tickets, they're so hungry for it. they're just completely gripped by it. when the elements come along, we've had two nights of rain and yet we've performed the thing anyway, they stay right with us. in fact, they think it's even better in the rain. after all, i do get to say blow winds and crack your cheeks. >> rose: yes. the idea of so many great actors have performed this, did preparation include watching, understanding, looking at those performances, not to imitate them but just to understand the range of interpretation? >> well, i have-- i calculated that i have seen ten productions of lear over the years. and you certainly remember all sorts of things about individual performances. i remember them all, the most vivid, i think, was the very first couple of times i

saw it. i saw paul skow field do it in that great production in 1964. >> rose: who directed that. >> peter brooks. >> rose: that's right, peter brooks did. >> and that, it was like i saw it three nights ago, i remember it so vividly. this year i stopped. there have been a lot of lears and i stopped seeing them. i think the last one i saw was derek jack objecti. >> i didn't see frank or simon russell or bill pennington there have been a lot of them but at a certain point i had to make it completely my own where no one sitting on my shoulder. >> rose: did you see it, was it a production put on by your father? >> you know, he did put it on, but when he put king lear on i was 7 years old. and my parents knew i wouldn't last until the end. so no, the first time i saw it was in 1962, the first season of shakespeare in the park at the delacorte with frank sillvara in the role. and it completely throttled

me. i mean that you remember. you remember just the impact of a play like this. it was like the first time i ever saw death of a salesman. >> rose: speaking of death of a salesman, are there other things that you very much want to play that when you look at all its things you have done, are there missing elements for you? in terms of great characters. >> i would say the only one was king lear. i don't have any bucket list play or part any more. i mean-- i'm about to do a delicate balance on broadway and i'm thrilled to be doing thamment but it's not something i have been waiting my whole career to do. king lear is. in my experience, all the most exciting things i've done, have been other people's bright ideas, things that i never even thought of myself for. other people think of you in bays that you don't sometimes think of yourself. >> rose: tell me who he is. who is lear? >> well, in our lear he

is-- we see him as kind of exuberant and manic and exciting man, beloved monarch. but he's aging to the point where he's probably always had a strain of manic temper and it is dan sullivan's wonderful concept in my opinion that the first time you see him he's extremely excited about this plan for dividing his kingdom. like it's something he just thought of, but hasn't really thought through yet. and his fool is in the scene. you get a sense of him being a very robust man with a huge open heart and a great sense of humor. but he's aged more than people realize. >> some people ask the question he is mad from the beginnings, or does he lose his mine over the process of the play. >> that's an extremeau good question and it's the number

one challenge. is calculating how he goes mad. i think there is the beginnings 6 a propensity for madness. i think when he explodes completely irrationally at cordelia it's a shock to her. she's probably seen his temper before but she's never seen it like this. and she's never seen it that insane. this is the person in his whole life that he loves the most. and it's almost because of the intensity of that love that his anger at her has such intensity. so for everyone it's a new shock. goneoral and reagan together they talk about how we have been seeing more and more of this. and then in succeeding scenes, you see different versions of madness as he declines into real derangement and dementia. and the entire challenge with dan sullivan's like exquisite guidance is just finding those benchmarks,

finding the moment, for an example, the moment when his madness, he has these huge, huge temper tantrums with his daughters, all three of them. that's, that propels him a certain distance toward madness. but then he's shut out in a wild and crazy storm. then he meets a mad beggar and the sight of that mad beggar poor tom who is edgar in disguise sort of kicks it all into yet another degree. suddenly he sees this is the solution. this, you know, this is unaccommodated man. no more but such a poor bare forked animal as thou art. scales fall from his eyes. he's going mad but it's taking them toward-- . >> rose: if he goes mad he's coming through to some sort of -- >> yeah, matness is like

caughterizing wounds. it's like, it's clearing his brain in lots of ways. >> rose: how big is the challenge to call i brat the mad snns. >> it is the challenge. >> the acting challenge. >> yeah. >> and it's also a physical challenge because this is, these are big huge loud things that happen. he was barking mad it actually gets easier as it goes on. the first act of lear has five huge temper tantrums. cordelia, kent, oswald, gonoral and reagan, that's five times i have to hit a ten on the anger scale. then comes intermission. and after that, it's a diminuendo. i get to the intersectio intersection-- interpition i think good, i'm going to make it tonight. >> rose: peter brook once told me, and i have had many conversations with peter here, that the fool is lear's inner voice, is that what he is or do you see him

as someone away. >> that's a nice way to put it. he is the most honest person in lear's world. lear has the benefit of three sort of help mes in this area. the fool who is steven boy never our production, lovely performance. kent jrxz o sanders, the one person who is ready to speak the truth to him in that opening scene, and edgar, a man pretending to be mad tom. pretending to be completely out of his mind but who actually sees lear, sees what he needs and helps comfort him. he's the one, for example, who helps him go to sleep when that's all he needs is just to rest. it's edgar pretending to be a mad man who is the only person who can get him to sleep. so he does have this support system of this very unlikely group, the four of us are like characters waiting for

godot. but to go back to your original question, the fool is the person who speaks truth to him and couches it in tom foolery. steven is very tough on lear, and very honest. but lear sort of knows he needs that. >> somebody said that in the 19th century there was a happy ending to lear. >> yes. >> yeah, samuel johnson said lear is simply too tragic to be, to perform that way. and the result was a lear with a happy ending. in fact, shakespeare provides this, almost perversely provides this ironic happy ending in the great let's away to prison scene, when he has recognized cordelia, she has forgiven him. it appears that everything is going to be all right, even though they're being sent to prison. to me that's shakespeare setting you up for a knockout punch. >> rose: he's preparing you.

>> but he does it in a very subtle way. because lear is still crazy. and cordelia is still grief stricten at what has happened to him. it's not a happy ending at all but it's the closest thing you get to it before the unbelievably tragic ending. >> rose: somebody said every old man is lear. >> well, you know, all of us who have aged past the age of 60 if we're lucky, we've seen our parents grow old, it's an amazing portrait of an old man losing his-- losing his mind, and his viability. a very proud and a very strong and a very capable man, losing it, you know, i've been through this terrible thing with both of my parents so, many of us have these reference points. i think the audience has it. people are coming up to me on the street, on the upper west side these days and telling me that i have broken their hearts and they burst into tears, its happened like three times.

>> because they saw their parents go through, and in case of alzheimer. >> you know, shakespeare, he has this scene where he can't quite recognize, can' can't-- help cordelia, says me thinks i should know you and know this man yet i am doubtful, i am mainly ignorant what place this is, it is like an exquisite portrait of dementia. there is this debate, is lear demented or not, of course he's demented. and shakespeare must have seen and observed dementia because it's so accurate. >> here's a scene, king lear dividing his kingdom which is what we have been talking about from the beginning. >> now, although the last, not least, to whose young love the vines and milk-of-burgundy strife to be in enterraced what can you say to draw a herd more

op you lnt than your sisters? >> nothing, my lord. >> nothing. >> nothing. >> nothing, will come of nothing, speak again. >> i'm thaep that i am, i cannot squeeze my heart into my mouth. i love your majesty according to my bond. no more, no less. >> cordelia, mend your speech a little, less it may mar your -- >> good my lord you have begot me, bread me, loved me. i return those duties back, as a right fit. >> rose: now there, you see, that's the. >> that's the first hint you get that oh, you know, he's not being reasonable about her also and she's being super reasonable trying to

be truth. >> this is jessica collins, just an exquisite actress. >> rose: trying to be true and he can't recognize it as truth. >> he just wants to be loved, he wants to be tolted how much he's loved. just tell me it doesn't have to be true, just tell me. >> rose: i never understood why he feels like he must divide the kingdom. >> at's an irrational and stupid choice. and the way we see it, the way i see it is he woke up in the middle of the night,ive's got it i've got the per fect idea. i'll just divide it up on the basis of how much they love me. i can't wait to tell everybody. and. >> rose: based on how much they love me. >> yeah. and it takes everybody by sur vice, goneoral and reagan have the good sense to participate in this insane idea and cordelia is for too honest. i'm not just going to make up a bunch of vacuous lies for you. >> you said once the most poignant line in the whole play is. >> i have taken too little care of this.

>> yes. >> yes, the beautiful arc of the play is the sort of parallel rainbows of the play lear goes mad and yet lear gains more and more perception. when he says i have taken too little care of this, it's in the middle of the storm, he's had this revelation, the entire line is poor naked wretches, we are so are you that by the belting of this pitiless storm, how shall your houseless heads and unfed signs, your looped and windowed raggedness defend from you seasons such as these. i have taken too little care of this. it's its first time he's perceived that there is another world out there, a world of unprivileged people. >> rose: this is not the first time you have played a shakespearian character. when you read shakespeare, when you recite shakespeare,

when you speak shares spear, you just feel what, mi so intouch with the gods of expression? >> well, i don't know, i feel like it's a musician sight reading marvelous chamber music. you just, a lot of shakespeare is very familiar to me by now. so it's has a lot of classical muss sick familiar to musicians. it's just, i read those speeches and they, you know, there's this incredible intersection of poetry and emotion, that shakespeare to me, it's the very best example of that. it's, you can look at it purely in terms of the beauty of the language. or you can look at it in terms of the power and shakespeare's extraordinary empathy. well, he manages to do it, do its same thing with the same phrases. you know, that thing that i just quotesed. >> so where do you put lear,

in all the characters that you have played in shakespeare. >> well, i actually have not done that much -- >> shakespeare. i have done about 20 plays. but most of it was before i was 20 years old. and in small roles. >> so no mack best. >> i never, did play macbeth in college. i played mallvolumio with the royal shakespeare company a few years ago. but this is the first time i've taken on one of the gigantic roles, one of the big four. >> do you wish you had done more. >> yeah, yeah, i stupidly turned down hamlet a few times it. i had other things to do. >> rose: was this things like television and -- >> i think it was other plays. or-- . >> rose: because there is this sort of thing that people who are not of the theatre think, that would be me, that every actor feels like feels like i have to take on hamlet. you didn't feel that.

>> i didn't have a burning desire. i have to tell you, to be honest, what i like working on most is new material. i love working with writers and creating something that nobody has seen before. i think there may be something oedipal going on this was very much my father's world. and mi a terrible snob. i only want to be in great productions of shakespeare. with great actors. >> rose: let me get back to the ed puts thing. >> okay. always go back to oedipus, let's go back to the breaks, charlie. but is there some sense that your father did this, so i want to do something else? >> a little bit, yeah. i mean i don't think i would be interested in doing a big year of repertory even at the very highest level with the royal shakespeare company. this has been a fantastic

experience, and a coming home experience. >> you wanted it and you offered yourself up for it. >> yeah, and actually i incited it. >> yes. and i do think about my father all the time doing, not just because it's an old man, but because i am embracing the thing that he loved the most. >> how much would you give to have him see this. >> oh, god, don't say things like that. my grower an sisters, my brother and my two sisters have seen it actually my older sister will see it saturday night. >> she will see the last production. >> the second to last. >> and for them, for all of us it's supercharged. i mean my older sister has been bugging me for years to do shakespeare, you know, you're the best shakespearian actor in america. why aren't you doing shakespeare. >> rose: exactly. >> that's her, that's her opinion, not mine. >> rose: fair enough, but she's not alone in that. so the answer is there were other things, creating new

characters. but and part of it was your father and part of it-- but none of it was fear. >> no, no, it wasn't fear. >> rose: no doubt in your mind you could have taken on any of those characters. >> well, i was asked to play shylock, i didn't think that was a good idea. >> rose: because you didn't particularly like the play. >> no i just don't think i'm well cast as shylock. i was asked to play prosperreault and i just don't find-- a great, great play and beautiful speeches but the story of the tempest just doesn't spell me the way king lear does. and the other roles were just sort of stupidly, i allowed myself to get too old to play them. nobody wants to see a 68-year-old hamlet. >> rose: no, true. but does this resonate with you, ben brantly writing in the "new york times", though he has played his share of villains on stage and on screen, mr. lithgow exudes an innate decency that can

never quite be disguyed in live performance. there's a sweetness to his leer even at the beginning. >> well, i choose to take that as a compliment. >> rose: well, you should. >> but you see it. >> rose: . >> i do. i have chosen to look for the sweetness in lear because i think it is, i just think it's a far more compelling and cathartic story. if you see a man who is capable of being loved, but needs it too much, to look for the sweetness, to look for the humor in lear, and look for the great companio companionship. he says nights must have adored him, you know, they must have loved going on a hunt with king lear, you know, the way the terrible pain of seeing your father grow old when you have loved him so much as a robust young man. that to me is what is so heartbreaking. and as far as me being

innately decent, well, ben brantly is wrong about that. well, "the wall street journal" mr. lith grow-- lithgow was play-- but there is what oscar said, on this program talking about this, why not times does this tragedy seem to hit a res national cord. could it be gaus there is some underlying anxiety that is characteristic of our moment, perhaps the sense that the entire system that holds our moral universe in place is subject to the arbitrary decisions of old fallible men and the possibility of genuine chaos, real cannibalizing barberism is closer on the surface than we can possibly imagine. that's really diving deep into. >> yeah. that's oscar. he is a man of big ideas. i do think the play is about disorder brought on by human error. >> exactly. >> and the restoration.

>> are we looking at that right now in the world? >> i don't know. it's not my job. to speculate on this. but i think, you know, i certainly feel that we are in a period where the center is not holding. you can't help feeling that. >> rose: i think the only exception i take t doesn't have to be old men, it can be young men or men, women of any age, it is the sense of being somehow losing control of your senses about everything. >> well, and therefore disorder prevails. >> and it is shakespearian paradigm, that's why people are constantly using shakespearian as an add jeckive when politicians get in internal trouble. >> it's a shakespearian tragedy. >> he allows order to, he allows this in disorder and then he restores order at the end. i mean his plays, his tlaj dees are cathartic and hopeful. there's always a coda in which you say we have just

witnessed something so terrible it's time for to us think about these things, nit together and go on. and i think that's-- the greats did the same thing. i think shakespeare just follows that pattern almost unconsciously. >> ac brazly, i think, said the critic said lear's too big for the stage. >> well, it's not too big for the delacorte stage. >> it does help to be tall. i will tell you that. >> yeah. >> it does. >> we have had these two incredible nights in the park where the elements have conspired with us. >> rose: and it made a better production. >> oh my god, they have been fantastic. including two nights ago when it was, when it was raining just sort of sprinkling the whole evening. and the audience stayed with us. they were cold, they were

wet, they were riveted. and with only ten minutes to go, it started to really rain, and it was just simply too late to stop. it was like a great baseball game. >> rose: take a look at this, king lear raging one more time. >> blow winds and crack your cheeks, rage, blow you cataract hurricane ♪ ♪ until you have drenched, drown the-- you sulfurous, and executing fires. thunderbolts, sing this white head! and now all shaking thunder, smit the pickerel-- of world, crash nature's bowls, all things spill at once that make ingrateful man --

>> pour holy water in a dry house, it's better of this rainwater out of door. in and thursday thigh sdaur's blessing this a nice piggy, not a wise man nor fool. >> humble, spitfire, spout rain, nor rain, wind, thunder fire, are my daughters. i can't not you, you elements with unkindness. i never gave you kingdom, called you daughters, you owe me no subscription. let fall your horrible pleasures. >> here i stand, your slave, a poor, infirm, weak and des pieced old man. and yet i call you certificate vial ministers that have pernicious

daughters, join your high engendered battles. grow old and white as this. >> i can't imagine how eckhaused you must be after that. >> well, intermission comes right after that. >> okay, good. >> i can smell the hey in the stable. >> that was an early preview. i'm much better than that now. >> has it been everything you expected it to be. >> oh, it's been fantastic am really one of my great experiences. we only get to do 24 performances of it. it sends sunday night and i can't even bring myself to think about it, it's going to be so sad. it's been a great cast and its audiences have been wonderful and responsive. it's been a thrilling experience. >> olivia once said that after playing hamlet he thought about it almost every day of his life. >> well, that is what i missed out on.

>> well, no, i'm thinking about what this might impact on you in terms of this is a play that will live in your mind although you already knew. >> i can imagine playing it again. it's been-- rses i can imagine playing it again. >> yeah, i think so. as i say, i'm only at the beginning of this window of opportunity. but i would want to keep on doing it and rediscovering it with dan, this, the great fear when you have a great experience like this is that you can never dup complicate if. duplicate it. >> rose: when you look back, all the things that you have done, what comes for you in terms of challenge, engagement, and definition as being in the category for you, they called on the best inside of you, to produce characters that live.

>> it's lard to single things out. i mean it's quite a grand-- . >> rose: tried to ask it a little bit different but it is the same question. >> i often jump to things that i'm doing at the very moment because it's some of in the front of my mind. but i have to say i did a play, the first time we had an interview, in 1988, i did and butter fly which was such a leap of faith. i mean very courageous producer stewart ostro opened it cold on broadway after a brief run in d.c. it was david lien wong's masterpiece. and it was a premise and a subject and a production that took people so by storm. ideas that nobody had thought before, certainly not in the context of a piece of theatre. the first great statement by an asian american playwright about what it's like to be

an asian american in american society. an this amazing meditation on sexuality and the east and the west. this was a french diplomat who conducted a 20 year long affair with a man thinking it was a woman. so provocative and provoking a play. when i said how much i loved working with writers and creating something brand-new, i think m butterfly is the best example i have ever had, and going from the sublime to the ridiculous, we did it once a week on third rock from the someone for six years. that was fun. >> rose: i often ask people this question, because we do lots of people who have one level or another involvement in shakespeare actor, director. teacher. critic. why slax spear? >> that too is an impossibleably big question. i always had this feeling

that shakespeare himself had a kind of bucket list of the great human emotions. and that he was going to write a play in which one of those emotions was the engine driving that entire play. you have sexual jealousy inout et-- othello. you have old age and dementia in king lear. you have the oedipus complex in hamlet. you have have blood thirsty ambition in macbeth. and those are just the tragedies. you know, you have all varieties of romantic love in the comedies. he just, he covers everything. i mean you can't talk about a human relationship or passion without a shakespearian reference point. >> rose: interesting know, wonder whether he started with that idea and then found the characters to deliver that material.

>> you know, one of the genius things that dan did was to bring in james schapiro, columbia professor whom you may have talked to, to be our dramaturgue because he gave greet context including virtually everything that shakespeare wrote was a reworking of something that had come before. an part of his genius was to examine the nature of hi reinvention. in fact, he gave us copies of something called king lear spelled lier, which was a great big pot boiler success ses about 20 years before he wrote his king lear. and it's awful. and shakespeare somehow managed to turn it into a masterpiece. and you can say the same thing about everything he wrote. so when we talk about why is shakespeare so great, he was a great writer for sure. but he was an even greater adaptor. >> yeah. >> take a look at this here is king lear with a blinded -- >> as thow wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes, i

know thee well enough, thy name is gloucester. >> you must be patient, the king crying hither. th now knowest its first time that we smelled the air we cry, i will preach to thee. >> lack the day. >> and we are born, we cry and we are brought to this great stage of fools. >> that's the great clark pet pers whom you know as lester from the wire. >> right. >> who is just profound in our production. >> we invited you all yesterday because you are family. >> are you telling us are getting divorced already. >> that's what i thought too.

>> no, we have to sell the apartment and we found a buyer already. so pretty soon we're going to have to move out. no it won't be long before i get another job. and shouldn't be long before we find another apartment. but in the meantime -- >> it's just a transition phase, probably just a week or two. >> we need a place to stay. >> wait a minute, did i miss something here. >> these last weeks have been tough on us, elliott. losing the job, looking

portrait of an artist as an old man. >> love is strange opens on august 26th. >> it's a wonderful thing that king lear closes on sunday night and love is strange has its premier on monday night. >> john lithgow is king lear at the delacorte theatre closing on sunday night august 17th. >> thank you for joining us. see you next time. for more about this program and early episodes visit us on-line pbs.org and charlie

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